Hello from Western MA

Hi everyone. I've been lurking on the forums for a couple weeks and decided to join. I've had my Charbroil electric smoker for a couple of years and after many tweaks we put out some pretty enjoyable good. After coming across this site I've made some modifications to my smoker adding a mailbox mod and upgrading to the Maverick probes so I can track meat and smoker temp.

A little about my background. I first got interested in smoking meat after my father-in-laws failed attempt at brisket. It was very tough but the flavor was good so my wife and I decided we could do better. We first tried on a small charcoal grill that never worked out. We had tremendous issues controlling heat in such a small unit with charcoal. After a couple unsuccessful attempts we upgraded to the cheap electric smoker that we still have to this day. It's not perfect but we can control the temp well and don't have to tend a fire all night. Here's our current setup with the mailbox mod:

This weekend I decided to smoke a pork shoulder and some cheese. Here it is right out of the smoker before being wrapped and held in a cooler until dinner:

We used apple and a bit of hickory smoke on the pork. Pulled pork with the extra meat that we will vacuum pack and freeze for future dinners during the week. Also the bones that pulled right out with ease:

Cheese before and after:

For cheese we had two types of cheddar, pepper jack, swiss, mozzarella, and colby jack. For smoke I used apple wood pellets from Amazen. The cheese didn't take on a ton of color but we can definitely smell/taste the smoke. Also the cheese was enjoyable right out of the smoker which was nice. We still sealed up to let age a bit but could have eaten it straight away.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to look at my post. This forum has been great in my short time here and I'm very much looking forward to learning as much as I can here. I'm already working on convincing the wife that we need to make our own sausage so hopefully we'll try that soon! Thanks again.